New research: Caffeine in multi-stage competitions

Caffeine — and, by natural extension, coffee — is a much argued topic in the running community. Most research into the effects of this legal performance enhancer have focused on the usage for one-time events, such as a cup of java before a road race, or even a regular run.

New research published in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise has documented the effect of caffeine on athletes participating in multi-stage events. The study focused on eight highly trained Nordic skiers, who completed ten-minute double-poling performance tests on back-to-back days, on three separate occasions. The first time, skiers were given caffeine 75 minutes before the test on the first and second day. The second round, they had caffeine the first day, but a placebo on the second. For the third round, skiers ingested the placebo before both of the back-to-back tests.

On the first day of both caffeine trials, the skiers performed better than on the first day of the placebo trial, by a factor of 4 per cent. On the second day, caffeine provided a 5 per cent performance boost over the placebo. Researchers would like to look further into the results if the test were to be extended over a longer period of time. If caffeine continues to have an increased effect on performance over extended periods of time, it could be significant for those participating in longer multi-stage events.

How much caffeine should you be taking in before competition? According to the American College of Sports Medicine, 3-4.5 mg of caffeine per kg of body weight is ideal for performance. This works out to about two cups of coffee.